Donald Clark Plan B

What is Plan B? Not Plan A!

Wednesday, October 31, 2012

Napsterisation of learning: Democratisation, decentralisation and disintermediation of learning

It is estimated that getting on for half of all internet
traffic is file sharing. Something like a quarter of a billion users in 2012
used BitTorrent technology (at any one time, this is more than YouTube and Facebook
combined). So has this revolutionary technology, of connection not collection,
also to hit the world of learning?

Disruptive network

The internet is actually a huge distribution network, with a
clever failsafe structure. If one part of the network fails, the rest will get
the data to its destination. This idea was developed as a protective device
against possible nuclear attack. Of course, this structure also allowed file
sharing and peer file sharing software to flourish, with massively disruptive
consequences for the music, movie, TV and newspaper industry.

Digital genie

It was 1999, just as the dot-com bubble burst, when this new
kid appeared on the block – peer-to-peer computing. And it was literally a new kid on the block,
the 19 year old Shawn Fanning, who wrote a piece of file sharing software, for
MP3 music files, in just three months that was to change the media world
forever. It was an immediate success and campus bandwidth was eaten up as fast
as it could be built. The digital genie was out of the bottle and it was an
immediate threat to billion dollar media companies. Free shared music, and
eventually films and other media were now available on the web.

File sharing wasn’t entirely new. A few years earlier Ian
Clarke, a University of Edinburgh research student, has written Freenet, a pure
file exchange system, with no central repository (Napster had a central server
for indexing and identification). The Seti project had been using shared
processing power for some time. Napster, however, captured the headlines and
imagination. It spawned hundreds of imitations. Gnutella released in 2000 was
the first completely decentralised file sharing system, with no central server.
Kazaa used supernodes to increase effectiveness. The BitTorrent protocol,
written by Bram Cohen, was to take file sharing even higher, using a swarm of
hosts to download and upload across networks.

Interestingly P2P services don’t really rely on altruism.
You contribute by simply participating. When you download a file, your files
are exposed for download by others. Consumers become involuntary producers.
This is not new. The telephone, like its predecessor the telegraph, used peer-to-peer
systems. What is new is tha massive increase in productivity file sharing
provides and viral distribution.

P2P and learning

When I saw Kevin Kelly speak about Napster at TechLearn in
the US over ten years ago , we pitched an idea to the organisation responsible
for innovation in Local Authorities, and built a P2P system for authoring and
sharing learning content across the Local Authorities in England and Wales.
Rather than develop a huge repository of content, we wanted to allow people to
freely build and share content, using a Napster-like file sharing approach,
with a central repository, for searching and identification of learning
content. HTML, PowerPoint, PDF and Word files were tagged with mandatory and
optional information and shared. The project ran for some time but was
eventually sold and has gone back to a Moodle-based service run a private
company delivering content to the public sector, who are still loyal to the
principle of shared content. This is what happened in the Napsterisation of
learning. The principle of free, shared content became embedded in the culture
of learning, through Wikipedia and OER.

Democratisation, decentralisation and
disintermediation of learning

Graham Brown
martin argues that Naspster paved the way for Apple’s iPhone and iPad and he’s
right, as it led to disintermediation in the music industry. Does this apply to
the learning industry?

The Napsterisation of learning can be used literally, as the
use of file sharing software to enable learning. In the wider sense it can be
used to describe the democratisation of learning towards learners and away from
reliance on middle-ground institutions, companies and teachers. Millions,
daily, access Wikipedia, Google Scholar and dozens of other sources without the
mediation of teachers or librarians. Decentralisation. away from centralised
institutions, such as schools, colleges, universities, libraries, publishers
and companies, down to actual learners, through web-based services has
certainly occurred and is accelerating. But the real shift would
disintermediation. Cutting out the middlemen, especially over-expensive
institutions. There are signs that this is happening. Peter Thiel’s description
of HE as an over-inflated bubble has taken root. Content providers also have
much to worry about, as their content is easily pirated.

It remains to be seen if the education and training world
will be as deeply challenged and changed as the music or newspaper industry. It
is certainly as vulnerable.

Napsterisation of content

Wikipedia has already Napsterised the encyclopedia business
with a product that’s bigger, better, faster and free. The whole canon of
western literature is largely available free online from sites such as Project
Gutenberg. TED, YouTube and other video services have disintermediated video
companies. Open Education Resources grow in quantity and quality by the day.

Napsterisation of software and courses

Moodle has bitten deeply into the commercial VLE market and
Totara is doing similar things in the corporate market. Why pay top dollar for
an LMS or VLE when you can get one for free. Courses are unlikely to be file
shared but MOOCs certainly promise to reduce the cost with their focus on online
delivery and volume. Skillsoft and other courses are available on pirate sites
if you look around. There is absolutely no doubt that this is rife in Asia and
China.

Napsterisation of eTextbooks

One example of this vulnerability is the rise of eBooks and
eTextbooks, we have already seen signs of Napsterification of textbooks, which
are often too expensive to buy, especially for learners in developing
countries. There is now a large number of file sharing sites that had got round
the DRM and other restrictions that eBook publishers use. This is one of the reasons educational
publishers have been reluctant to enter the eBook market. We may yet see the
Napsterification of learning in this market.

Publishers have learned (maybe not) from the music industry
and come down hard on eBook file sharing sites. Library.nu and ifile.it (based
in Ireland) had distributed hundreds of thousands of eBooks before being shut
down, making millions from advertising and donations. This year (2012)
seventeen publishers across seven countries issued legal action against a rack
of eBook file sharing sites, but as soon as one closes another crop pops up. This
is likely to continue.

Conclusion

The
technology of Napster and BitTorrent file sharing has had some effect on
learning. However, it has had a profound effect on the way media files are
shared and, as a consequence, attitudes and behaviours on the web. It’s specific
technical influence on learning has been confined to e few isolated projects and
lots of eBook file sharing sites, but the Napsterisation of learning in the
conceptual sense, where learners do it for themselves and disintermediate
teachers and institutions has been profound.

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

Twitter: in learning less is more

In the psychology of learning ‘less is more’. The learning industry, education and training, is
plagued by overlong manuals, powerpoints, papers, books, talks and lectures.
Cognitive overload is the norm, forgetting and failure the consequence. This, I
suspect, is why twitter is so damn popular. It’s short and sweet.

If the internet has taught learning professionals anything,
it’s the fact that most of what we do is unnaturally long-winded. In all media,
the internet has acted like a massive experiment, where real people have shown
their preference for information in shorter pieces. Why - because that’s how real
human communication and learning works. If you sat down next to someone in a
plane, asked them a question, and they replied with a 50 minute lecture, no
matter how knowledgeable they were, you’d want to strangle them. So the
internet has spawned media such as Twitter, Facebook, Blogs, Wikis and YouTube,
all of which have brevity as a virtue. And none are as brief as Twitter.

Who would have thought?

Who would have predicted the rise of a social networking
site based on short 140 character posts? People were, and many still are,
baffled by the success and popularity of Twitter. Yet it was really a
confluence of two already successful technologies, txting and posting on social
media. It combined 160 character txting (shaving 20 characters off) with the continuous
posting flow of social networking (followers as friends). You follow people you
respect and they follow you. More promiscuous than Facebook or blogging, it’s
like having lots of small encounters with people from all over the country or
world on a daily basis. So what use is it in learning?

Twitter and learning

Twitter can be used at a number of levels in learning;
personal, at events, within formal classes/courses and inside organisations. Its
use as a networking and knowledge sharing tool for learning professionals is
clear, as is its virtual expansion of events such as conferences, where the
backchannel enhances the event for attendees and non-attendees. However, it is
not at all clear that it is useful as a structured learning tool in schools and
classrooms, where the effort taken to plan and execute Twitter-based learning
experiences are often forced, a little artificial even shallow. However, even
here, it is early days and things may emerge that prove useful.

Twitter and professional network

As Twitter use has exploded so has its adoption by
academics and experts in all sorts of fields. Following experts gives you all
sorts of useful ideas and links for research and assignments. In this
context, tweets often have links to deeper content that allow you to connect
things and deepen your knowledge and exploration. These links often lead to
blog posts, articles, papers and events. It is often forgotten that twitter
signposts up and coming events in the real world. Sometimes they signpost
conferences, lectures, talks that are happening at that moment. Indeed, most
tweets from learning professionals point towards something interesting they’ve
found. In this sense, Twitter is like a recommendation engine, supplying you
with contemporary ideas on your subject or profession.

Twitter as backchannel

At a major educational conference I attended in Doha, Qatar,
a huge slide went up asking all delegates to switch off their mobile devices.
We took a photo of the slide and tweeted it (tweetpic), saying “don’t be stupid, the sign should say the
opposite”. The next day the chair confirmed that we were right. A Twitter backchannel
is a virtual extension of a real event and allows participants, both at the
event and beyond, to observe, communicate and share ideas. It greatly enhances
the event and can be fed back into the live event, either on a screen or as
questions for speakers, discussion etc.

A hashtag (#) is a collective link that collects tweets
around a specific event. Many find it useful to tune into a hashtag to get the
gist of a talk, key concepts, quotes and comments, without having to attend the
conference. Tweeting pictures can also be useful, especially key or summary
slides in presentations. Given the 140 character restriction, this is a way to
get more detailed information across. We all know that talks and lectures are
padded out, so this can be a useful way of getting the crystalised thoughts of
the speaker.

Beyond this many tweet points of agreement and disagreement,
so that critical thought and discussion becomes part of the experience. This
can develop into short dialogue using Reply function). Hashtags can also be
used for questions to speakers, lecturers and teachers. I’ve answered tweeted
questions during, at the end and after talks. This widens the opportunity for
questions to those beyond the room, as well as allowing more introverted
attendees to ask questions. Some make such Tweets visible on a big screen which
encourages self-moderation and gets the debate out on the floor.

So, going back to my Doha example, announce your hashtag at
the start of a conference or event (It is amazing how rare this is) or several
may arise, causing confusion. Then encourage tweeting. They are honest and
provide a blow-by-blow account of the event. People also Tweet at the end of a
conference which is also useful. So why not harvest these instead or as a
useful, evaluative supplement or replacement to your happy sheets. My guess is
that the tweets would be far more detailed and useful.

Twitter & courses/classes

Lots of teachers/lecturers/trainers have used Twitter to enthuse learners. Some, have
students Tweet as characters, fictional and historic. The discipline of 140
characters teaches you to construct concise and sharp sentences. In language
learning Tweeting short sentences can get students going in the actual use of a
language. Following famous people who Tweet in the language you’re learning
gives you a steady stream of relevant and realistic comments to try to
translate. Or you can follow people directly and tweet in your target language.
Pass the Tweet is a creative game where one person comes up with the
title, the next the opening sentence and so on around the class, good fun,
highly creative and a great writing task. You can go one step further and set
up an account for your class. I’ve also seen teachers open up their class to
outside Tweeters, by inviting tweets from the outside. Twitter chats are
pre-defined periods where a question is posed and the contributors tweet
answers in reply. This can be used to connect students within a class, across
different classes, schools, even countries. Trips are always more interesting
when photographs and comments are made along the way. So, on trips to museums,
art galleries and especially journeys and field trips, encourage tweeting from
mobiles.

Twitter & workplace learning

Whether it’s
a project, initiative, launch or change management problem, lots of organisational activities will benefit
from being tweeted, if only to keep people informed but also for inviting
suggestions and feedback.

https://www.yammer.com/ is a Twitter clone that you can use privately, within
a company or organisation to access experts, ask questions, organise events,
poll or private message. Benefits reported a dramatic reduction in email and
increased productivity.

Downside

One could also argue, that it’s often introduced as a bit of
a gimmick and wastes more time than it saves. Twitter’s strength is its almost
organic growth and use. As soon as it starts to be used in a formal classroom
or training context it can seem a little forced or fake. Its strength is as an
informal personal learning tool or as a backchannel at events. As a formal
learning tool it’s unproven.

Twitter can also be a distraction among learners leading to
rude tweckling (heckling using Twitter) and inattention. Your Twitter stream
can be flooded with automated feeds from your other social media. You also have
the problem of inclusion, namely two groups, one Tweeting, the other having no
idea what’s happening on Twitter. It can also be more impressionistic and less
coherent, than say a blog post about a talk or conference, with poor searchability.

Conclusion

Twitter has been boosted by the rise in mobile, social
networking. This has taken it into cafes, onto trains and into conferences,
lectures and classrooms. At first sight, Twitter seems an unpromising candidate
for learning. Yet once we grasp its fit with the psychology of learning, its
multiplicity of uses and popularity, it seems entirely relevant, as long as we
don’t force it into inappropriate formal contexts.

Sunday, October 28, 2012

Blogs: vastly underused teaching and learning tool

You’re reading this on a blog. As a blogger since 2006, I can only say that it has been one of the
most important learning experiences in my life. I don’t go on courses or attend
an educational institution but I do write blog pieces and read oodles of stuff
on other blogs.

For me, a blog is more than a diary. It is a place for honest
expression, a bit of reflection, and some sharing and collaboration. You learn
from putting yourself to the test, by writing a piece that is readable by
others, but also benefit from the comments that come back, challenging or supporting
your view. A blog is an invitation for dialogue. So what’s its contribution to
learning?

Blogs benefits

As a learning experience the benefits are clear. The act of
writing forces you to précis your thoughts, reflect on experiences and come to
some conclusions. The problem with much education and training is that written
analysis is either too short (multiple choice or word/phrase answers) or too
long (long-form essays in higher education). Blogs provide a far more
useful format. A blog post shouldn’t be too short or too long. Some topics
require no more than a paragraph or two, others a more considered couple of
pages of detailed argument. Like good journalism blogs should be concise and compelling. Blogs force you to be concise but substantial. They are a useful alternative to essays in schools and Universities. Blogs reinforce learning, increase writing and communications skills and (often forgotten) increases retention. They build confidence, self-expression and autonomous learning. Even the shyest students can find a voice.

Blogs and memory

Another great advantage of regular blogging is that the act
of writing a clear post involves deep processing in memory that results in
better retention. I have a much better memory for the topics, exhibitions,
books, films, events and journeys I’ve blogged. The very act of blogging not
only boosts memory but acts as an aide memoire. I often go back to my blog
posts when I have to give a talk or need to respond to a query on a specific
topic.

Blogs and sharing

It is important to remember that blogging is an open
invitation to converse with others on a topic. In some cases, such as my
critical posts on NLP, I’ve had acerbic, personal attacks. It’s all good and I
rather like the idea that the blogosphere is a bit rough and tumble. More
importantly, I’ve often had good examples, new perspectives and arguments I
hadn’t considered before.

Blog and ‘voice’

Good blogs have a ‘voice’. In fact blogging allows you to
find your voice. The best blogs are written by those who do it for themselves
and find in themselves the joy of writing. I am so glad I’ve blogged for all
these years as I feel I’ve produced material that would have been lost to my mind
and memory. As you can probably guess I’m not a fan of blogs from organisations
– no real voice and too much direct marketing for my taste.

Teacher blogs

The admirable Millie Watts, the social networking teacher, had a
blog ‘What I taught this week’. This was
obviously useful for her students. Most teachers leave no trace at all of their
lessons, yet we know with absolute certainty that learners need repeated access
to knowledge to learn. A teacher’s blog can summarise what was covered in
lessons, included media content such as diagrams, photographs and video. It can
also link to useful external resources. As a resources for learners who may have
found the lesson to difficult, were off ill, have English as a second language
it can be a useful safety net. In doing homework or revision, it is a useful
resource for all.

In many ways it is almost odd that a teacher, lecturer,
trainer, instructor does not blog. They are in the business of imparting
knowledge and this is a simple way to do precisely that, and it’s easy to use
and free!

Similar arguments apply to leaders and senior managers in organisations.
Many CEOs and other senior managers and experts within organisations blog. This
humanises the organisation, gives people a voice and a chance for others in the
organisation to get to know that person better.

Convincing teachers can come through arguments for deep learning, reflection and retention.

Learner blogs

Benefits of blogs for learners include summarising their
experience and better retention. Useful notes for revision are also created for
reinforcement and revision. The blog format not only improves writing and
communication skills, it is a powerful form of preparation for exams that
demand reflection and good written answers. It can also be used as a form of
peer-to-peer learning, where other learners are encouraged to comment on each
other’s posts. This can be left open or done formally.

David Mitchel is a huge evangelist for pupil blogging. He didn't set one piece of homework all year, yet his pupils worked
producing 70,000 words+ on their blogs from home. His primary school has also
shown measurable improvements in writing skills. Millie Watts encouraged her students to write ‘What I learned this week’ blogs. Blogs
encourage students to write the right way, not over-long essays but short,
sharp pieces that communicates ideas. Get them to blog for a specific target audience. Oh and don't call blogging homework, a hideous word that turns it into a chore.

Blogs and assessment
A learner blog gives a running account of what the learner is learning. It acts as a form of continuous formative assessment. There is an argument for replacing the drudgery of homework with learner generated blogs that force the learner to reflect on what they’ve learned. There's a degree of honesty and substance in a learner blogs that one is unlikely to find in formal testing.

Informal blogs

There are millions of bloggers who have been energised to blog
on almost every imaginable subject. The blogosphere has, in effect, become a
source of knowledge sharing in all professions and all subjects. No matter what
subject interests you, enthusiasts are no longer tied to the narrow-cast
journals or trade magazines. The blogosphere is a rolling wave of knowledge
leaving a useful archive in its wake. For me it is perhaps the most tangible
evidence for the health of informal, lifelong learning.

Blogs and politics

At another level, that of political engagement, blogs have
played a significant role, not only in stable democracies but perhaps more
relevantly in repressive regimes and most notably in the Arab Spring. Bloggers
have written about corruption, presented alternatives and galvanised people around
causes and real events. To be absolutely clear here, for some naive commentators have dismissed this activity, bloggers have been murdered,
imprisoned, tortured and harassed in many countries.

Blogs and publishing

Finally, it has to be recognised that the blogosphere is a
publishing medium in its own right, as well as a source for authors, columnists
and journalists who can emerge in a meritocratic fashion, to publish their own
work. Entire works of fiction and non-fiction were blogs or have emerged from
blogs.

Conclusion

Blogs are a potent and vastly underused teaching and
learning tool. The habit of regular writing as a method of reflection,
synthesis, argument and reinforcement is suited to the learning process. Blogs
encourage bolder, independent, critical thinking, as opposed to mere note
taking. For teachers they crystallise and amplify what you have to teach. For
learners, they force you to really learn. A last word for those bloggers who have been jailed, flogged and killed, maybe we owe it to them to do this.

Saturday, October 27, 2012

Do the maths: 7 reasons why the obsession with maths doesn’t add up

I'd much rather employ this smart, innovative, humorous and creative person than someone who actually knows how to apply Pythagoras's Theorem. Maths has never been the touchstone for being 'smart' or 'employable' in my book. So I'm annoyed that maths has become a weapon of mass distraction in
education, a topic full of bluster and exaggeration. Maths is hard to learn, hard
to teach and easy to test, in other words the ideal recipe for mass failure. Everyone seems to agree (apart from Roger Schank and I) that we have a huge problem in maths. The
problem, it seems to me, is a lack of a basic understanding of maths by
politicians, employers, even so called experts in education. I honestly believe
that most of the people who crow about maths are not that good at maths. So
here’s some FAILS, or failures to do the simple maths.

FAIL 1 Numeracy not maths

There is persistent exaggeration in the size of the
so-called maths problem. This is caused by people shooting arrows, drawing a
chalk circle around the arrow and calling it a bulls eye. Typical is the recently
formed National Numeracy charity, which claims we have 17 million (nearly half
the working population) with poor numeracy. They do this by relying on one ‘survey’
and conflating numeracy with maths, as their definitions are based on GCSE
achievement.

This exaggeration is endemic and a simple failure in
statistics. The actual needs in the real world match what we call ‘functional
maths’: basic numeracy, use of a calculator, some understanding of statistics
etc. This is not congruent with what is actually taught in GCSE maths. If they
were represented as sets there would be a small overlap. When employers talk
about poor maths, they are largely talking about poor numeracy. These are two
different things. In fact, almost invariably people conflate and confuse maths
with numeracy (or functional maths). A simple Venn diagram is all that’s needed
to make this clear.

FAIL 2 Most maths quantifiably irrelevant

What’s the quadratic equation? What’s a surd? When was
the last time you divided two fractions? When did you last use algebra? Ask a
large audience these questions, as I often do, and you’ll be lucky to get one
or two hands raised. The recent report into the teaching of maths confirmed,
yet again, that the curriculum is largely irrelevant to most students, as they
are unlikely to use much of it in later life. They rightly recommend a new
qualification in functional maths. If taught GCSE maths were a pie chart, most
of it will not be used in later life. In any case, if we do need the more
complex stuff, we can learn it later. Do the maths. It doesn’t add up.

FAIL 3 Maths is easy to test

Rather than test what really matters in problem solving
and real life, we’ve stuck to a lazy and often irrelevant method of testing
that puts maths at the top of the tree. Why because it’s easy to test. Maths
problems have single solutions and are therefore easy to test. Actually they
don’t and this is why a real understanding of maths is difficult to test.
Nevertheless, problems, largely of calculation, are perceived as being a good
test of one’s ability in a general sense. This is nonsense. Maths problems are
rarely realistic. Nobody goes around using maths to share marbles, split up
pizzas, share out cakes at parties or dilute orange juice. There is a critical
failure to ‘bridge’ between the real world and its representation in
mathematical language. But in an age of perpetual testing, maths is an easy,
read lazy, option.

Fail 4 Maths a transferable skill

If knowing maths teaches you to think clearly, how come
the world has been plunged into a financial crisis by people who are good at
maths but couldn’t see the problems
they were causing.The answer to this
problem was identified by Thorndike over a century ago. ‘Transfer’, the degree to which learningtransfersto actual performance in the real world is
still a largely misunderstood or ignored issue in education. Learning is
largely (not always) a means to an end, namely the application of that
knowledge or skills, yet few educators know or care much about transfer. They
assume it exists where it doesn’t (for example in maths and Latin) and make
little effort to make sure it happens. Thorndike showed that transfer depends
on the similarity of the situations or domains. This principle of ‘identical
elements’ led him to recommend problem solving and practice in real-world
contexts, so that the learning tasks and context matched the real world. Has
this lesson been leant in the teaching of maths, or Latin? No.

FAIL 5 Calculators calculate

Almost everyone has a calculator in their pocket, as it’s
a native app on almost every mobile phone and computer. Yet we insist on
teaching people how to ‘calculate’ as opposed to useful, functional numeracy.
Experts, like Wolfram and others, have pointed to the crude culture of
‘calculation’ in school maths, at the expense of real, functional and
conceptual maths. Richard Norris has shown that maths in the workplace is
intimately tied up with computers, spreadsheets and others forms of software.
Yet maths and ICT are treated as two separate subjects. Isolating ‘maths’ in
this way presents it as a purely abstract and often irrelevant subject.

FAIL 6 Miscalculation on teachers

Statistically,
your child was, is or will be, almost certainly taught by someone whose
knowledge of maths is rather poor. We know, with mathematical certainty, that
primary school teachers have poor maths skills. The recommendation
of the recent Government report into Maths teaching is a minimum B pass in GCSE
before you’re allowed to teach the subject. This sounds like a bad joke until
you realise that our children are being taught by largely primary school
teachers with an absurdly low competence in maths. It claims that, “Almost all of those on
primary PGCE courses gave up studying mathematics at age 16. So, by the time
they taught their first classes, they had not studied mathematics to any
meaningful level for at least six years.” Only about 2% of primary school
teachers have a degree in science or any STEM subject. Another shocker is the
fact that in secondary schools, “24% of all children in secondary schools
are not taught by specialist mathematics teachers”. Read that again. Most
maths is not taught by maths teachers or even by teachers with a solid grasp of
the subject.

FAIL 7 PISA ‘standards’

The PISA results show plummeting performance in maths by
our young people. The Chinese have screamed to the top. We’ll be an economy the
equivalent of Bangladesh in a few years if we don’t get our maths scores up.
None of these sentences are true, yet the leaning tower of PISA, many claim,
show a badly built edifice with weak foundations that will eventually topple.
This is all baloney. A more detailed analysis of why PISA is wrong.

This is a common mathematical problem among politicians,
employers, even so called experts in education. Our performance has remained
stable. There is no ‘drop’ in standards. If you construct a league table, you
can, mathematically, rise and fall in that table while remaining the same in
terms of competence. That’s the problem with league tables – they create the
illusion of winners and losers.

Gove is an English graduate with scant knowledge of maths
and science. I know because I challenged him on a shared platform at the Tory
Party Conference in Blackpool when he claimed that all schoolchildren should
know that the orbit of an electron relies on the same force as the orbit of the
planets around the sun! There were guffaws from the audience, so I suggested he
needed a new example as the forces at work here couldn’t be more different
(true story). He went apeshit but he was still hopelessly wrong. His EBacc has all the hallmarks of a PISA-led curriculum, far
too academic, and exclusive. His greatest crime is to have moved the goalposts
after goals have been scored. If you change the goalposts so dramatically and
quickly, you simply condemn 85% of students as failures (only 15% currently
meet the Ebacc standard). What’s
worse,Goveis
applying the measure retrospectively. This is like moving the goalposts at the
end of the game and disallowing goals scored. It’s madness. Do the maths. You
can have schools with high achievement in Maths and English plummet down the
new league tables from near the top to near the bottom, as they haven’t focused
on humanities or languages. One weird consequence is that a student who does
Latin and Ancient History will be judged above those who do Business Studies,
Engineering, psychology, a third science and lots of other subjects. It’s worse
than bad, it’s perverse. I’m glad my kids are leaving secondary education, as
it descends into this backward looking nonsense.

Conclusion

We don’t actually live in a more mathematical world. We
live in a world where most maths is done by calculators, computers and
machines, or a relatively small number of experts. The vast majority of us need
little actual maths, other than ‘functional maths’. To funnel all young people
into a path that demands a mostly irrelevant, maths curriculum is to turn them
off school and learning. This obsession with maths may, mathematically, be the
very things that lowers our general educational attainment.

Thursday, October 25, 2012

3D printers: gimmick or game changer? Next big thing or expensive way to produce lots of ‘small, useless, plastic things’?

OK, if you have a spare grand or so for a 3D printer. Are
they the ‘next big thing’ or merely an
expensive way to produce lots of ‘small, useless,
plastic things’? Apart from adding considerably to planetary waste, what
impact will 3D printers have in learning?

Not a game changer

Technology is unpredictable. When Gutenberg produced his 2D printing
press it led to massive social and political changes, and a shift towards
putting learning literally in the hands of learners. This was to drive a
religious reformation, scientific revolution and a rich cultural life based
around writing and reading. In education, books and text remain the mainstay in
most subjects.

Could the 3D printing press have a similar result? Well no.
Books had been around for 12 centuries in learning prior to being printed.
Little plastic objects have also been around for a long time but are not used
that much in learning. Sure, there will be some applications in learning but
this may not be a game changer.

What’s available?

Technology starts out expensive, experiments with formats,
then prices plummet as the technology settles and becomes an affordable
product. Laser printers, when invented
1969, were $20,0000but are now around 0.5% of that price, $100. This
already happening with 3D printers. Sure, you can buy a $20,000 professional HP
3D printer but a $1200 3D printer is already available.

First came Cupcake and Thing-o-matic
then Makerbot Replicator with a
single or dual head so that two colours or two different materials can be used
in one object. Repraps such as Prusa,
Mendel, Darwin etc are hacker designed using open source. Ultimaker, originally a student Msc project in Holland is now a
viable $1194 machine. Makerbot,has had $10m VC funding, and itsReplicator2
comes in a box. The market is still young, with a wide price range, different
types of technology, using different materials producing different levels of
quality.

How do they work?

Depends. Some squirt molten plastic or resin from a nozzle
in layer after layer as both a table and nozzle move in three dimensions.
Others use powder, ceramics even metal. Formlab’s laser plus resin is $3000 but
resin is expensive $150 a litre, three times the price of plastic. Plastic
around $50 per kilo but you can make hundreds of objects

Printers can print themselves

This is exaggerated, but it is true that some of these
printers can print off some of their own components. The more they can print
the cheaper they will be to replicate in other locales. More interesting is
that the technology has benefited from the open source movement, in both
software, hardware and the sharing of3D objects.

What do you do with them?

You can clone, create,
prototype, share and replicate objects. Clone objects using a 3D scanner
then print as many off as you wish. This has already happened in Metropolitan
Museum of Art hackathon, where exhibits were scanned and cloned. Greek statuary
from the British Museum has also been 3D printed. Create new objects, anything
from new art to practical devices. Prototype objects, so that they can be
refined, tested ergonomically and aesthetically, even presented to raise funds.
Share objects, as they are all ultimately, relatively small packets of data,
that can be shared, uploaded and download like any text, audio, image or video
music file. Tens of thousands of 25000 objects can be downloaded from sites
such as thingiverse.com and grabcad.com. Replicate objects on site
or closer to their point of sale. Why ship objects when they can be
manufactured on demand? It gives a whole new meaning to just-in-time
production.

Long tail attached to one large beast?

This is a Chris Anderson, long-tail product that caters for
all sorts of small batch, even one off objects for design development and
actual delivery. This is interesting for a retailer, such as Amazon, where you
can satisfy long tail demand in books. However, it’s likely the Amazon model
will prevail, namely domination by a major player. For example, a new factory
was opened this year in New York, the Mayor opened it with a pair of 3D printed
scissors. This factory will 3D print any object you want in whatever colours
and numbers, prototypes or finished products. It prints 3D 50 industrial
printers.

How can they be used in learning?

Isn’t it odd, however, that we teach and learn people about
the 3D world largely in 2D? Yes, but how often do you actually need a 3D object
to learn or understand something?

Art
& design

Museums are already using these printers to replicate some
of their objects. The creative possibilities are endless, where students create
forms and prototypes for sculptures, jewellery etc. It is likely to spawn new
art in itself.

Archaeology

Archaeology in 3D is revolutionising the copying of bones of
early. Louise Leakey’s African fossils. But other rare objects such as
cuneiform tablets, coins, almost anything we pull out of the ground can be
replicated on demand.

Engineering

Unfortunately, we in the UK have started with the rather cumbersome
£6m research centre Engineering and Physics research Council, which says it is
working with industry. What this lacks is real entrepreneurial push. However,
it is clear that 3D design, prototyping and testing will benefit from this
relatively cheap technology.

Maths
& physics

Maths can be visualised, from simple geometric shapes,
volumes, surface areas, intersections,
to sophisticated topographies. In general it offers huge opportunities
to teach maths using real maths problems with real object creation as the goal.
This could surely add a welcome boost in motivation for students who fail to
see the connection between abstract maths and real world applications. The
physicality of the process has been shown to instil curiosity and
understanding. Interesting paper on this.

Medicine

In medicine, there are niche applications, such as anatomy,
rare physiological conditions etc. However, it is likely that the real practice
of medicine has more to gain than learning such as customised hearing aids,
dental implants and so on.. Prosthetics can be created anywhere at anytime in
remote places, customised legs, arms, hand etc. What’s more, with a scan of
your existing leg an exact mirror copy from the digital file can be created.

More ambitiously, Professor Lee Cronin at the University of
Glasgow has been working on models downloadable chemistry sets that can make
complex drugs. The3D printer created the chambers and tubes which you fill with
the correct, commonly found ingredients, and out pops a drug.

Bioprinting uses bioink (cells) to build layer upon layer to
create tissue. Ultimately it is hoped that entire organs, heart valves or bone
implants could be created this way. In the short term a 3D printer could print
skin cells directly on to a wound. Printed meat could also be used by
pharmaceutical companies for testing, saving huge amounts of money.

Science

The real world is in 3D (well maybe more but let’s put
esoteric maths and physics aside until 6D printers come along) yet science is
taught in 2D, largely in print or from 2D PowerPoint presentations. Molecules
in chemistry, organic forms in biology, planets and comets in astronomy the
list is endless…..

Music
You can even print your own flute! See this video. Other instruments are also possible.Fun stuff

The Cube is a Chinese 3D plug and play printer for
kids/families which can produce small toys, such as figures, robots, dinosaurs
etc. in many colours for $1299. You buy cartridges just like a normal printer.
You can print off clothes and accessories, such a bikinis, plastic shoes and
purses. Rather worryingly, you can create replica keys really easily and a 22
calibre handgun has already been created! I feel a film script coming on…

Serious stuff

This is exciting, 3D objects for the developing world. Water
pumps, frames for eye glasses (which break more often than the lenses),
replacement parts on vital machines, such as sewing machines etc. are all
possible. The problem with poor and remote economies is that the cost of
shipping is often prohibitively expensive. By simply shipping the software,
objects can now be printed at the point of need.

Conclusion

Every educational institution could have a 3D printer that
can create objects across the curriculum, on demand. STEM subjects are often
the first port of call, but many other subjects can benefit, especially art and
design. While it is true that the potential of a technology is often realised once
people start to use it in anger, 3D printers are in danger of being the ‘next
big thing’ when they are, in fact, just expensive machines that churn out ‘lots
of useless small things’, more gimmick than game changer. Time will tell. What
is clear is that 3D printing is a game changer in the real world outside of
learning.

PS
Thanks to Carlo at the wonderful International Centre of Theoretical Physics for his excellent recorded seminar on this topic that can be found here.

Monday, October 22, 2012

Values as ‘crap acronyms’?

I was on a conference panel last week, when
someone flaunted their ‘values’ approach to training. Now whenever values and training
collide inside the ‘round and round the table’ Hadron collider of HR, the net
result is usually a ‘crap acronym’.

Bacronyms: values
created to fit word

Chances are that some wag in HR
or training has shoehorned some abstract nouns into a word that sounds vaguely positive,
completely losing sight of the original intention. Are they telling me that
their values ‘just happened to fall into this acronym’? Actually, what happens
is that at least some of the values emerge from the acronym.

How about this for banality from
a Cheshire voluntary group: FLUID: Freedom
2 Love Ur Identity. Or another real example of a crap acronym: VALUE: This HR person went online as
she could only think of Value Added….. and wanted others to fill it out! They
did, and she was delighted with, Value
Added Local, User friendly Experience. What a load of guff. When values are
created to fit a word you want to say – shove your course….

Using middle,
lower case letter in acronym

PEOPLE: Positive Spirit and Fun, HonEsty and Integrity, Opportunties Based on Merit, Putting the Team first, Lasting value for Clients and People, Excellence through Professionlism. One
overlong, impossible to remember acronym with eleven nouns, and I love the way they have to
use the ‘E’ in the middle of HonEsty to make it work! This, by the way, is from
an HR consultancy.

AAAA (Association Against Acronym
Abuse)

It’s not that I don’t like
acronyms (Abbreviated Coded Rendition Of Name Yielding Meaning). They’re
great as memorable cues. For example, I rather like ABC (Airways, Breathing,
Circulation) in first aid and the customer care acronym GREAT, as an aide memoire, where five
simple things can be recalled on the job:

Greet all customers & make them feel
comfortable

Respect
cultural &
other personal differences

Evaluate how your customers want to be served

Adjust your approach to match your customer's
needs

Thank your customers for their business.

I also have a soft spot for funny acronyms, such as ALITALIA
(Airplane Lands In Turin And Luggage In
Ancona),BAAPS
(British Association of Aesthetic
Plastic Surgeon) unbelievably a real organisation and DIMWIT (Don't Interrupt Me While I'm Talking).

…it’s just that I’m a fully paid
up member of AAAA, the Association
Against Acronym Abuse.

Conclusion

This type of ‘affective’ training
is delivered by sincere people who don’t know the slightest thing about how
people learn, so we get poor presentation-driven pedagogy. Values need to be believed and felt
emotionally. You need pretty sophisticated experiential training, through scenarios
or fist-person-thinker simulations to do this well. It can be done and one of
the best I’ve seen was for Apple, which was seriously scenario-led.

Injecting values into an
organisation is hard and most often fails. It failed in the banks
(catastrophically), it failed with politicians (expenses, morals, snobbery etc.),
it failed in journalism (watch Levinson). I have a confession, I’ve delivered a
fair number of these programmes into banks and similar organisations. They’re
always the same, some fatuous acronym and values that stand no chance of
widespread adoption through training. Why? You can’t teach values from a
flipchart of PowerPoint. The acronym is usually a flipchart and PowerPoint
gimmick. A list of abstract nouns is not a list of values. People see through
the artificiality of this stuff as it doesn’t relate to them personally.

Sunday, October 21, 2012

Clickers: formative feedback key to better learning

Earlier, we saw how Victorian slates were used as whole
class feedback devices, when students were asked to complete a writing task and
hold the slates up in the air for perusal by the teacher. Clickers perform the
same function electronically. It is a profoundly learner-centric piece of
technology, which also happens to be an effective device for shaping teaching.
They can be used for polling, whole class assessment, individual assessment, answering
multiple choice questions, short answers, peer assessment even mood
measurement.

Teacher feedback

Schools suffer from one major drawback, class size. Teaching
is largely a one-to-many activity and it is difficult for even experienced
teachers to know what is going on in the minds of so many students. Black & William claims that this feedback failure is a major problem in poor teaching.
He recommends ‘hinge’ questions that allow teachers to assess whether what
they’ve taught has hit home.

Clickers allow the teacher to poll students or ask key
questions to get anonymous or identifiable feedback. This feedback is important
as it allows the teacher to identify whether actual understanding is taking
place, before moving on. Failure can be a destructive force in learning wen
learners are exposed to embarrassment even ridicule.

Learner feedback

From the learners’ perspective, this type of interaction is
challenging and forces them; first, to raise attention; second, to reflect on
the topic; third, assess themselves; fourth, see how the class as a whole is
doing; fifth, get some help. Anonymity can be a virtue here.

Mazur – peer instruction

Eric Mazur, who teaches physics at Harvard has been using
clickers to improve his teaching for many years. Rather than deliver long
lectures, without interruption, he stops at key points and asks diagnostic
questions. These questions tend to be natural language questions that really
test the underlying principles of physics, rather than the application of formulas. If the histogram shows that many of the class have not understood the
point, he arranges them into groups so that peer-to-peer learning can take
place, asks the question again, then moves on. The data he’s gathered suggests
that this approach has led to significant increases in attainment and many
universities have since adopted this approach. Note that it is the feedback
process that is important. Mazur claims that coloured cards work just as well.

Mobile devices as clickers

Web-based response systems link teacher and students across
the web and allow them all to set questions and see the results. Several
systems now exist for using student mobile devices. These can be used to poll
or answer like other clickers but SMS messages can also be sent giving another
more detailed level of feedback. Forums can also be added that allow
peer-to-peer comments and answers to questions. With the increasing
availability of wi-fi, browser-based solutions are easy to access and use.
These systems are obviously far superior to Bluetooth, infrared or radio
frequency systems.

Twitter

A dedicated hashtag (#)allows students to answer/comment, as
people often do now in conference sessions or on courses. This can be used with
closed systems such as Yammer.

Conclusion

This simple piece of technology is one of the few
technologies that were designed to inject interactivity into the classroom, a
one-to-many teaching environment. Its usefulness, proved by the likes of Eric
Mazur, has meant further development across a range of technologies. Profoundly
learner-centric, it provides a feedback loop that allows the teacher/lecturer
to dynamically assess the effect of their teaching. Given the low cost, ease of
use and pedagogic power of this simple piece of technology, it is a wonder that
so much money has been spent on whiteboard technology, when audience response technology
is available?

Tuesday, October 09, 2012

Calculators: Education stuck in pre-calculator age

Archaeological evidence for an abacus goes back to 5th century BC Greece, however, there is indirect evidence of their use in Mesopotamia, Egypt and Persia. It is still widely used in Asia. The humble electronic calculator was the first computer to impact
teaching and learning. It quickly replaced mechanical slide rules and mechanical calculators in the 1970s. Calculators now include
scientific, algebraic, trigonometric and
graphing functions.

Education is still stuck in pre-calculator
age

Everyone’s miserable about maths: employers, politicians, teachers
and especially learners, many who fail and hate the subject with a passion.
Indeed, governments have become obsessed with the subject, largely on the
hysteria surrounding the PISA rankings.

One issue that is receiving intense attention is ‘calculation’,
which is kicking up a storm in maths education. The ubiquity of calculators has
led some to question the way we teach maths in schools. They claim that the world
has changed from analogue to digital and the teaching of maths needs to respond
accordingly.

Some argue that calculators have led to a reduction in
numeracy and maths skills. They recommend not using calculators in schools
until a certain level of competence in mental arithmetic is reached. Others
argue that the traditional focus on ‘calculation’ needs to be replaced by a
more sophisticated curriculum of solving problems using maths. Why teach long
division, when you are unlikely to ever use it in real life? Calculators can
also be used to do the necessary calculation spadework on algebra, trigonometry
and graphics.

Maths need exaggerated

Some, like Roger Schank, believe that the need to learn maths
is grossly exaggerated as only a tiny proportion of adults will use the maths
that is taught, beyond basic arithmetic. His point is that most of what is
taught, especially algebra, is of no real practical use and does not help
people to think logically. He often asks highly educated audiences to tell him
the quadratic formula – few ever answer. Sure, some will need maths in their
later career, so says Roger, let them learn it later. Roger has traced this
obsession with maths back to early 19th century curriculum choices
and claims that this is a historical problem, fuelled by the fact that maths is
easy to test, especially ‘calculation’

Too much calculation

Conrad Wolfram decries the focus on ‘calculation’ in school
maths. We spend most of our time teaching calculations by hand, which any
calculator and computer can do better than any human. Practical, mental arithmetic
is fine, but what are these numeracy basics? Automation pushes the user towards
using the tools in more sophisticated ways. Maths is not calculation and over
the last thirty years calculation has been automated by calculators. Education
is still stuck in a pre-calculator age.

Far better to understand what you’re trying to achieve. He
recommends that programming is a better way to do maths. It makes maths more
practical and academic at the same time. He goes further and argues that the
obsession with calculation in maths kills off the initiative, intuition and perseverance
that maths needs. In other words we’re turned off maths by maths. Students
learn to look for and apply formula, which they then proceed to calculate. Text
books are full of primitive, dry, exercises that seem like chores. Many now
argue that real life problems should stimulate mathematical enquiry through the
use of more word based problems.

Calculators and computers

A calculator is pretty standard as a native application on
PCs, Macs and mobile devices. Tills automatically calculate the correct change
for customers. Calculators are therefore embedded in newer forms of technology
making them more readily available. This is one potential use of mobile devices
in schools that teachers should consider.

Conclusion

Maths is forced, by law, upon people who see it as lacking
relevance and don’t want to learn it, taught by people who, because they’re
good at maths, often don’t know how to teach it. Yet the curriculum is aimed,
largely at those very few who will use high-level maths professionally.

Monday, October 08, 2012

TV: from Goggle box to Google

Since its inception TV has been used to educate. Indeed the
first TV company in the world, the BBC, still has ‘educate’ in its mission
statement. As a mass-broadcast medium with almost full penetration in the
population, it has the ability to reach very large numbers of people. For many
it is the most popular activity, after work and sleeping, yet few would see
television as a truly educational technology and many see it as working against
the education of children and adults. Sedentary, couch potato television is
certainly not seen as an educational medium.

Goggle box

Television’s main educational
genres are:

·formal course material

·documentaries

·children’s TV

·drama

·adverts

Some of these, like formal Open
University or PBS lectures for courses and adverts on public safety and health
are direct. Others, such as documentaries are a bit less direct and often rely
on the entertainment and production values of television for their effect.
Others still, such as teledramas, children’s TV, such as Sesame Street, and
drama are a lot less direct, even indirect in their intention. So TV has number
of formats spread across the formal to informal spectrum.

The rather unpopular term
‘edutainment’ sums up the dilemma that television faces in education. Its
primary function as a one-to-many entertainment medium can aid but just as
often hinders its power as an educational medium.

TV and formal learning

The UKs Open University has had a long standing relationship
with the BBC. It is not entirely clear that this has been money well spent. The
early broadcasts were neither powerful ‘lectures’ nor good TV programmes. These
course-based TV programmes, famous for their wooden presenters, beards and
kipper ties, were commissioned from 1971 onwards, and finally canned in 2006,
as newer technology was cheaper and better.

Unfortunately, the tradition has continued with the trite
History of the World (backed by the OU), presented by political journalist,
Andrew Marr. The current strapline is “The Open University and the BBC:
bringing learning to life”. With this series it is killing it stone dead. TV
proved to be a poor partner in formal learning.

Documentary

A great many excellent documentaries have been made on
almost every imaginable subject. History has a slew of its own channels but
there seems to be a curious skew towards the history of war that betrays TVs
populist appeal. Nevertheless, science is well represented as is the natural
world, although again there seems to be a skew towards predators and more
bizarre sides of nature. There are also dedicated arts channels.

TV’s allure, on the surface its greatest strength is
actually its greatest weakness in learning. The flood of beautifully shot
images and steady narration sweep the learner along but at a cost. There’s no
rest for reflection, little time for critical thought and much sinks and is
forgotten behind this bore wave of presentation. You are forced to go at the
pace of the narrator, and before the ability to record, stop and rewind, have
no chance of recapping things you may have missed. In many ways TV was like the
ancient scroll that simply rolled by at a steady pace, without page or chapter
breaks.

Children’s TV

Most children’s TV attempts to be directly or indirectly
educational. Sesame Street is perhaps the most famous example but there are
plenty of others.

Critics point to the dangers of using TV as a babysitter,
the passive viewing and impact of advertising targeted at children. A wider
argument still rages over the role of TV in robbing our children of their
childhood, obesity, isolation and brain development. Much of this debate has
shifted to online activity by children, but the arguments are similar. The
‘goggle box’ has been blamed for encouraging sedentary activity and passive
viewing in young children, as well as promoting violence.

Teledramas

Fictional drama, especially telenovelas in Latin America,
has been used to indirectly educate viewers on topics such as literacy and
family planning. Soap operas have also deliberately included social themes into
the scriptwriting, in an attempt to raise awareness in the specific target
audiences that watch these programmes.

This approach is parasitic in the sense of relying on
sedentary soap opera watching to get to an audience entranced by television.
It’s a Trojan horse approach.

Adverts

The University of Industry advertised around prime TV spots
to reach learners who had disengaged with education and successfully got 3.5
million learners on board. Others have used adverts to get students into their
courses and universities. This is perhaps one of the more successful uses of TV
in education.

Governments have also used television to get educational messages
across, especially about health and road safety. Political parties have also
used the medium as a platform for advertising their politicians and policies.
There’s also televised political debates and current affairs programmes.

The downside is the blatant consumerism of advertising of
non-nutritious food and toys, especially to young children, at inappropriate
times. Again, TV is Janus-faced as it relies on this direct blanket advertising
to pay for the very programmes it sees as educational.

TV formats restrictive

Most educational TV is slotted into existing TV schedules
that started on the hour or half past the hour. This is why TV largely conforms
to the half hour or one hour format. You have to schedule programmes at
predictable times which people can remember. This is fine for long-form
documentaries but, as we have seen with video on the web, most useful
instructional video needs to be a lot shorter. There is no ideal length,
indeed, the rule could be that it need only be as long as it needs to be, and
no longer. This generally means a few minutes, rather than a full hour. Only
very expensive documentaries can sustain audience attention in this long
format.

Amusement is not learning

In Amusing Ourselves to Death, Neil Postman warns us against mistaking the
rhetoric of a broadcast medium for learning. Stripped of dialogue, the flow of
film and television strips us of our ability to reflect, think, deduce and
resolve issues. It stops us learning. However, his main argument is that
teaching, as a form of dialogue, is being replaced by entertainment or
amusement. Video is also difficult to index and search, another pedagogic
drawback.

Technology carryover

Technology has a tendency to carry over its ethos and
methods into newer emerging technology. Early printing mimicked manuscripts. The
typewriter locked us into the QWERTTY keyboard and so on. TV has also had a
limiting effect on online learning. Too many projects, especially public funded
projects, were in trawl to TV and disastrous projects, such as BBC Jam wasted
tens of millions with little or no output. More worryingly, is the broadcast
mentality that forces overlong video sequences and high cost production on
content, with little advantage in terms of learning and retention.

Conclusion

TV has educated millions, largely informally, through news,
documentaries and drama. It has also helped reach people through advertising to
get them into education. In this sense it has been a social good and served us
as best it could. However, the downside is that it has always been a one-way, overlong
and inflexible broadcast medium. While still a force in informal learning, through the documentary format, its role in formal education and deep learning proved to be short-lived, as it has been shown to be inferior to online delivery.

Sunday, October 07, 2012

Radio education: huge and hugely underestimated

For over
80 years it’s been quietly delivering formal and informal learning to millions
worldwide, especially the poor and marginalised. Far from being an old technology it is now transforming itself through podcasts, digital and internet radio.

Formal learning

Radio is a broadcast medium and so has several practical, educational
advantages:

·has huge geographic reach

·reaches very large numbers of people

·audio is cheap to produce

·audio is cheap to transmit

·radios are cheap

·local languages can be used

·can be self-sustaining

Formal learning, where radio is used on its own or is integral
to a blend of distance learning materials that deliver formal courses, has been
delivered for many decades. Unsurprisingly, it has long been used In large,
sparsely populated rural areas, where schooling is difficult to organise, such as
Australia and in most developing countries. Radio remains the most popular and
accessible form of educational technology in Africa.

International Educational Systems has taken radio into
marginal populations, such as refugees, nomads and those who simply cannot
afford to go to school. Women have also been reached in some societies, where
schooling is impossible or difficult, for example the Somalia Distance
Education Literacy Programme (Somdel) supported by the BBC Worldwide Education
Trust, where 70% of those who passed the course were women.

However, much radio in rural areas is used directly by
schools, as it can deliver consistent and high quality content. Radio has been
of particular use in health education, especially HIV/AIDS. Farming and food
distribution has been taught in 39 African countries through Farm Radio
International.

There has been radio delivered teacher training in Mali and training
for health and education stakeholders in Sudan. One of the features of many of
these initiatives is their delivery in local languages and their sensitivity to
local cultures. In some cases, such as the Sudan Radio Services, radio time has
been sold to pay for the educational services making it truly sustainable.

However, one of the criticisms of radio education is its
focus on outside originated content, abstracts life skills and a lack of
practical vocation content, especially farming, as the majority of children are
the sons and daughters of farmers. Cheap wind-up or solar powered radios are
now widely available from developers such as The Freeplay Foundation. This
gives radio a real edge over TV and computer technology. Typical target audiences
are in the tens or hundreds of thousands, some in their millions.

Audio and learning

Audio also has several cognitive advantages in learning:

·listening is a universal skill

·note taking is easy

·imagination has to be used

·great for visually impaired

·easy to deliver in multiple languages

·good in language learning

·obviously essential for music

The use of the imagination is a fascinating point as it has
been argued that this leads to deeper processing and higher retention in some
subjects. The obvious downside is the lack of images and the fact that
broadcast media are not under the control of the learner. The lack of control
has been remedied by recording and podcasts have significantly improved the
power of radio to teach and inform at the learner’s own pace.

A whole culture has developed around radio learning to
include ‘listening groups’ and support materials such as comics and workbooks. In
Australia, short-wave radio was used to transmit and receive between farmsteads
and therefore among groups of teachers and learners, sometimes mimicking traditional
teacher-classroom arrangements. Increasingly, for example in Zambia, we have
seen radio’s power amplified by the supplementary use of iPods and mobile
phones.

Informal learning

Radio is still used to educate in formally. The BBC’s R4 has
over 10 million listeners a week and purely educational broadcasts, such as the
highly academic ‘In Our Time’ have
been running for years with many hundreds of podcasts now free on iTunes, covering
science, philosophy and history. Radio has also been used, by the likes of the
Open University and others for successful local advertising.

Radio and propaganda

Of course educational radio is not always worthy as it has
also been used for propaganda. Major and minor powers still use radio as a form
of educational colonialism. The Nazis were the first to see the totalitarian
power of radio with Goebbels claim that, "radio
will be to the twentieth century what the press was to the nineteenth". The Japanese
used ‘Tokyo Rose’ and the North Vietnamese "Hanoi
Hannah" against US troops and the Nazis Lord Haw-haw, against the British.
The US has used radio for propaganda against many countries including Panama,
Cuba and Iraq.

Radio and new media

Podcasting is the true heir to radio. To timeshift an audio
experience and put it in the hands of the learner, gives them is convenience
and control. Internet radio has given many access to distant radio stations and
led to growth in stations with a very specific focus. Far from being a dead or
dying medium it is finding new purposes and new channels.

Conclusion

Radio is scalable, in the broadcasting sense. It’s low cost
and reach have seen widespread use, not only in the developing world but in developed
countries like the UK, where radio has long been respected as a source of high
quality educational content. Video is very far from killing the radio star.

Friday, October 05, 2012

Typewriter: relic that left us with QWERTY, carriage return, backspace and shift

Terms such as carriage return, backspace and shift, as well
as the QWERTY keyboard layout, remain as hangovers from typewriter technology.

Older than you think

There is evidence of an early typewriter having been
patented and built in 1714, but the modern version is recognised as having been
Invented in the 1860s. Interestingly many early versions were attempts to build
a machine that could allow the blind to type. The first commercially successful
machine was sold in 1868 and had the now famous QWERTY keyboard.

The typewriter used the hardware of moveable type combined
with the software of a small alphabet, to produce a popular and relatively
efficient mechanical, writing machine. Until then, writing was handwritten
using pens and pencils. The problem with written text is the legibility (or
not) of the writer. The characters are literally propelled onto the paper to leave
indelible marks. The other innovation was the moving cartridge that provided
accurate lines and letter spacing. Carbon paper could also provide copies.

Typewriter and writers

Typewriter technology literally put typesetting into the
hands of writers. Neat books, papers, articles and letters could be written in
a format close to what looked like a printed version, almost ready for
publishing. Early adopters included Nietzsche
and Mark Twain. Kerouac famously typed his entire novel On The Road on a single roll of paper. Even in the age of word
processors, authors such as Will Self and Cormac McCarthy continue to use
typewriters.

Boon to bureaucracy

Curiously, the first typewriters were marketed as machines
at which female ‘typists’ would take dictation from male managers. Indeed, the
term, ‘typist’ was a standard job description for decades and the ‘typing pool’
a sizeable department. Although they do
not require power or batteries (unless a later electric model) prone to jams
and failure, require ribbons and make text difficult to erase, so are not conducive
to editing and redrafting, typing was also a boon to bureaucracy. I have visited
the Stasi headquarters in East Germany where thousands of typewriters were used
to type over 100 kilometers of files on its own citizens. I know this, as a
friend of mine, a major Stasi spy, was outed when these files were seized in
1989.

Technology locks in practice

Technology is not always as liberating as we imagine. It
invariably has limits and downsides that are not always apparent. The
mechanical nature of the typewriter meant that the writer had to be slowed
down, as the keys would clash and jam. The solution was the QWERTY keyboard,
where letters are deliberately spaced far apart to slow typing down. This
keyboard format, a relic from the mechanical past, still dominates the digital
future. The word ‘typewriter’ it is sad, is the longest word you can type from
one row of letters on a QWERTY keyboard.

This has become a major debate in the online world where
several savvy commentators have researched the degree to which Google, Apple
and others lock users into their algorithmic model, giving the illusion of
openness. Jared Lanier in We Are Not All
Gadgets is a strong critic of ‘lock-in’ technologies.

Conclusion

Typewriter technology was a temporary bridge from
handwritten writing to word processing. Unfortunately it has become the most
famous example of technology locking in a bad and inefficient practice, the QWERTY
keyboard. Made rapidly redundant by word processing, with its superior ability
on editing and producing digital files, it is now no more than a curious historical
relic, a lesson in how quickly human habits can change.